LG Urbane LTE 4G smartwatch

For some reason smartwatches recently have been nothing more than an extension of your smartphone. This has boggled my mind seeing as though the ‘original’ smartwatches came packing their own SIM. It finally seems that the tables are turning and LG are helping make watches smarter.

It’s been 5 years or so since I got hands on with wristphones or phonewatches such as the sWaP, the Samsung s9110 and wrote about the plans BlackBerry had for one. Recently I wrote about the Neptune Duo that has switched the roles that smart watches and phones have found themselves in for the last couple of years. LG are now planning to release a 4G smartwatch as was rumoured at the end of last year.

LG actually had a wristphone out in 2009 called the GD910 which was on pay as you go in the UK. There are some smartwatches which come with 3G, but LG has decided to go one step further and announce the 4G LG Watch Urbane LTE.

The Urbane LTE has a larger battery than the regular Urbane which was recently unveiled (see below for the teaser vid). The 700 mAh cell will provide the watch with several days of standby power. It also comes with NFC, and three physical buttons for navigating through menus and settings.

You will be able to talk over VoLTE (Voice over LTE) without the need for a phone, and there’s a “walkie-talkie” feature to let multiple people speak at once. An emergency speed-dial feature lets you make calls with just one button.

Interestingly the Urbane LTE is not going to run on Android Wear, and word is that it won’t be running on its in-house webOS platform neither. It’s going to be interesting to find out what will be powering the Urbane LG, that’s for sure.

I have no information regarding pricing or release just yet, but LG has promised that the Urbane and Urbane LTE will both be on show at MWC next week.

I know that Roy, who wrote the LG G Watch R review for GadgetyNews, is still not convinced about the point of 4G in a watch. How about you?